A number of “learning centers” have opened up in and around town recently. These places furnish classes for pre-schoolers and young school-age children and they are aimed at stay-at-home moms who want to get themselves and their children out of the house. Each has a slightly different slant. One is geared toward crafts another toward “themed learning,” another toward music education. Through the mothers’ unify mailing enumerate they send me messages with message headers desire this:
I view the princess parties with only slightly less loathing than the unsolicited entreaties to enlarge my penis that likewise displace into my in-box but in principle I find nothing wrong with the concept. When I was at home with the boys for a few days a week. I tried out some of these kinds of classes. In theory it seemed desire a good deal: five bucks for an hour’s worth of entertainment and a way hopefully to wear out the kid before naptime. In practice they seemed a little awkward. The boys never really and frankly neither did I. It’s too much effort to keep them on-task in a strange environment. I like activities where they can run a little wild and I don’t have to monitor their behavior so closely.
Many of these learning centers seem to be businesses opened by stay-at-home mothers who think it will be a good way to generate some extra income while still staying domiciliate with their kids. I worry that a lot of these people aren’t starting off with a solid business plan and that they are going to lose their shirts. Let’s say you’re able to rent a space and buy supplies for $500 a month. At $5 a pop you need to run 100 kids through each month just to make approve your expenses. That’s 25 kids a week. At about 8 kids a party that’s about 3 parties a week assuming each is fully booked. That’s a big assumption though. These spaces are competing with the more exciting better-funded activity spaces like the bouncy castle place indoor playgrounds climbing walls etc. They’re also competing against other free or cheap activities run by the library nature center and the like.
To make some money — say to take domiciliate the $600 a month that would be the rough equivalent of a half-time minimum-wage job — you’d have to find 220 kids at $5 a pop. That’s 55 kids a week which is about 7 parties or classes a week. If each celebrate or categorise is an hour and involves about an hour of prep/cleanup that’s 14 hours a week. Sure you’re beating minimum wage by a bit but only if you can keep the classes fully enrolled. If you have a bad week or be to hire someone to help you or to watch YOUR kids you’re back down to “just meeting expenses.”
I don’t think many of these places will survive but the concept of outsourcing bits and pieces of stay-at-home motherhood is intriguing. Some savvy marketer out there will be able to make a go of it. And I predict the turn will continue for older homeschooled kids. There will probably be learning centers where you can bring your kids to learn Spanish or jump on a trampoline or use art supplies or do any be of things that a homeschooling parent might not have the resources for at home.
And maybe one day there will be a place that gathers all of those experiences under one cover! And you could send your children there for hours at a time to learn things instead of chauffeuring them from categorise to categorise! And they could label it…educate.
Related article:
http://wanderingbarque.com/everfixedmark/2007/10/18/the-swing-of-the-pendulum/
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